Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Blah blah five magic rings, blah blah five special young people. Blah blah Gaia lazy as fuck. Blah blah Earth's greatest champion Captain Planet. Let's get to it. Hopefully this one is more like Episode Two and less like Episode One.

A random Asian villager is leading a buffalo through woods. What for? Who the fuck knows. This show is the absolute best at giving no background or explanation to fucking anything. And just as I'm thinking that, a fucking dragon beast starts tearing up the woods. Okay WTF? It's a literal dragon. It breathes fire and shit. I'm betting this turns out to be some sort of robot, but it looks NOTHING like one. It looks and moves like no giant robot dragon could ever move and look. So either it's a terrible nonsensical machine, or its a fucking dragon in a show that's supposed to be about down to Earth saving the actual planet. The villager gets away, because obviously this show can't show people dying as much as I cross my fingers for it.

A fucking dragon beast. Because realism.

"What could be causing this destruction Gaia?"

"YOU must find the answer to this question, Planeteers". Gaia responds, ever so predictably. The 'I've got some serious boozing to do' is left off. So she actually knows what's really happening but she wont tell the Planeteers? She truly is an epic bitch from deep in the heart of 'Nam.

Gi has a friend in Thailand apparently. They go visit him and he tells them about the dragon beast. I am still agape at this whole development. It's destroying the crops for God's sake! OH THE HUMANITY! OH BUT WAIT. We zoom out. There are two familiar faces watching and listening in! We cut away to our...

ECO SUPER VILLAIN OF THE WEEEEEEEK!

Wait. It's fucking Hoggish Greedly. Again. They're recycling villains already?! Fuck this is going to be a long goddamn season. So it seems that this time his porky plan is to spook the villagers with the dragon beast so that they leave, then he's going to fucking strip mine the place for rubies. Pretty caring plan if you ask me. If he was really evil he'd just murderise them all. The dragon beast attacks the Planeteers. I'm still baffled by all of this. Gi tried to put out the fire but she fails. Kwame does the same and fails. CALL CAPTAIN PLANET YOU MORONS! Oh wait... they actually do. They call Captain Planet. Well, shut me up.

Captain Planet dives into a river, proclaiming "What's a nice guy like me doing in a DIVE like this?" Oh Captain Planet. You're the wittiest witbag who ever witted. He redirects the river and solves the forest fire, draining the existing river and no doubt killing thousands of fish. Eco warrior indeed. So this shit seems to be solved and we're only 10 minutes in! Maybe we're going be spared the next half! But NO! No such luck!

Wheeler hits on Linka in the dark woods, because it wouldnt be an episode of Captain Planet if we didn't have some sexual harrassment by the eco warriors. All of a sudden, Wheeler is cock blocked by the dragon beast. Wheeler - "Let me show you what we do to evil spirits where I come from." Wait, New York City has a policy on dealing with evil spirits that involves magic rings with the power of fire? That must be pretty deep in the city's records. Wheeler uses fire on the dragon who breathes fire, who ever so shockingly turns out to be fireproof. WHODA THUNK IT. You know, this show is making it so damn incredibly hard to cheer for its protagonists who include whiny fuckwit Ma-Ti and sexual harrassment Wheeler with a side of INCOMPETENT MORONS.

So, Hoggish Greedly has a pink plane with a pig snout. It does nothing to endear him to me. It picks up the dragon beast and Wheeler. Hey look at that, the dragon beast is actually a strip mining machine. So I was right after all. Probably best if we ask minimal questions about this because I think my cerebellum would disintegrate if I did so. Ma-Ti tries to sense where Wheeler is BUT EVIL THOUGHTS BLOCK HIS VISION. LoL Heart Ring.

Trolling Ma-Ti Count: Four.

Greedly sends out the baffling dragon beast robot to fight the Planeteers. To nobody's surprise, Wheeler gets rescued and sneaks off yadda yadda kindergarten plot. Gi washes Greedly away in a flood of water. Captain Planet gets a second summoning in one episode and traps the dragon beast in some vines. "I'm feeling VINE how about you?" he says. Lucky there isnt a loaded gun present or I would fear for my own continued existence on this planet.

Greedly pulls himself out of the river and runs away. You know, these eco villains sure aren't facing any real justice. They're just allowed to leave with no real consequences. Which is funny, but at the same time terrible cause it no doubt means more Greedly episodes in the future.

Episode Three Pollute-O-Meter: This episode sucked a giant fat ecological dong. Seriously, it was horrible. Nothing made sense, Greedly sucked, and the Planeteers made me want to dig my eyes out with a spoon. Please, if we're recycling villains, let there be some Verminous Skumm next episode.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

EPISODE TWO: 'Rain of Terror' aka. Save the animals! Except the rats!
Immediately, we find ourselves at an abandoned factory. The structure of the first two episodes seems to be fairly identical as in episode one we got introduced to Hoggish Greedly right off the bat. And whilst I wasn't overly impressed with OTT pig man, could today be a different story? We'll soon find out as we meet our...

ECO SUPER VILLAIN OF THE WEEEEEEEEEK!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Verminous Skumm. Yes, once again, the writers really aren't leaving much to the imagination with these fucking names. "HE'S BAD! IT'S RIGHT THERE IN THE NAME! NYUK NYUK! VERMINOUS. GET IT?! CAUSE HE'S A RAT!" He bursts straight through the Earth in some sort of admittedly fairly neat drilling tunneler vehicle. He has some rat henchmen with him too. And he goes right to work in winning my heart.

"The stinkin environmentalists had the place closed down, cause it was pollutin too much! Some people just got no appreciation for filth." Skumm proclaims. And immediately, it just feels right. His voice is wry and understated. A quick inspection makes my heart begin to pound as I find he is being voiced by JEFF GOLDBLUM (!!!). The sense of being a caricature of villainy is completely gone here as you just feel that this rat knows exactly why he's doing what he's doing and feels totally justified in it. And he's not OTT at all.

Now, of course, the show offers us fucking zero of the history or backstory of Verminous, but just because he's so endeared himself to me already, I'm going to make up the likeliest story. Verminous, being a half man/half rat hybrid, was probably not the most popular kid. Most likely he was ostracised, beaten, looked down upon or much worse. Who knows what sort of trauma was inflicted on him by those xenophobic goddamn humans. After having his dignity stripped from him repeatedly, Verminous decided that humans were pieces of shit and undertook a campaign of ECO VIOLENCE, to show them just what rats can do. And I'm ON BOARD. You go, Verminous. We deserve it.

So Verminous and his rat soldiers take over the factory and start burning some coal. Apparently their plan is to add a chemical to the burning and make a cloud of ACID RAIN which will totally pollute a nearby city and show those fuckwits who's boss. Any plan with acid f'n rain in it is a plan I can totally get behind.

On with the episode!

The planeteers are training on some lame obstacle course. Wheeler is perving on Linka again. They use their powers to make sure the other people lose the race, demonstrating their maturity once again. Kwame knocks Gi off the top of the wall with his Earth power and she seems okay with it because he catches her. I would be like "Bitch, I could have been killed you mother fucking turd bag!" but apparently I'm no Gi. Ma-Ti sucks at everything and falls in mud and is laughed at by the other Planeteers in another great exercise of team building by making fun of the weak South American kid.

Ma-Ti trolling count: 2

OH BUT HOLD THE PHONE! Fucking Gaia appears in a vision in midair to send the Planeteers on a mission she again doesn't want to do shit about herself. Ma-Ti has a whine. "You would all be better off without me" he says. Well, I can't really argue with him, he's the turd with the power of heart and we've already established that's a joke power if there ever was one. Lazy Gaia stays awake just long enough to tell them about Verminous Skumm.

"He's an exterminators nightmare" Wheeler says, demonstrating the very xenophobia that is motivating Verminous' campaign of vengeance. Of course, no one thinks about Verminous Skumm's point of view at all. They're all just like, BAD RAT MAN! ACID RAIN! BEAT HIM UP ALREADY!

So the mission begins and FUCKING MA-TI IS STILL WHINING LIKE A BITCH. He takes off his heart ring (likely because its shit) and ostensibly quits the Planeteers, sitting his ass on the plane while his teammates put their ass on the line. Serves them right for treating him like shit I suppose, but fuck this whole thing is just endless bitching from Ma-Ti and he drains my sympathy in even quicker time than a sexual encounter with Scarlett Johansson.

"As the old saying goes, into every life a little ACID RAIN must fall" - Scumm says, and my heart melts a little inside. Skumm's minions shoot toxic waste out of guns at the Planeteers. Wheeler decides to use his fire to burn it up but it just ends up fuelling the acid rain cloud. Epic fail. This episode is definitely way better than the first one. Awesome villain, and he's actually winning.

Unfortunately, the rats take the Planeteers prisoner instead of killing them, unfortunately prolonging the agony of this series. Ma-Ti still cowers on the plane like a bitch. Ma-Ti FEELS HIS FRIENDS FEELINGS with the heart ring. Holy shit, that's useful! Especially cause he's already seen them imprisoned on his magical screen of omniscience and anyone with half a brain could probably have guessed without a fucking heart ring that they're probably DISTRESSED AND IN NEED OF HELP! So the heart ring does nothing useful to help him at all, because Ma-Ti grows a miniature set of balls and sneaks in in an oil drum and rescues his friends. Gaia wakes back up and appears in another useless vision to tell him that with the power of heart Ma-Ti can make it.

Trolling Ma-Ti count: 3.

Lazy ass Gaia appears from a nap to see how badly her illegal child army is fucking up.

Meanwhile, the prevailing wind is set to blow the acid rain cloud towards UNIDENTIFIED CITY! OH NO! So the Planeteers summon captain planet, which they probably should have fucking done in the first place. I'm guessing this is going to become a pattern. Planeteers fuck around without Captain Planet and fail, summon Captain Planet and succeed. Logic would maybe dictate that they should just summon the fucking blue monstrosity from the get go, but as we've seen, logic is not this show's strong point.

OH WOW! The acid rain totally takes out a farm! Score one for Skumm! "Now that's entertainment!" Scumm laughs in his awesome understated diabolical snicker. The best thing is, the farm is not mentioned or shown for the rest of the episode, so Verminous takes a victory here! Totally acid rained the fuck out of that farm! Yeah!

Captain Planet blows the cloud away. Yawn. Then he dissipates it with some deus ex machina mineral deposit. Sigh.

"Hey you! Get offa my cloud!" Skumm says. He tried to blast Captain Planet with a big tank gun, but Captain Planet ties it in a knot and finally, Skumm runs away. At least he didn't get captured and he's likely to be back. I love that guy.

"The real hero is Ma-Ti" says Captain Planet. UM, WHAT?! I CALL BULLSHIT. He whined and bitched the entire episode. He did fucking nothing except hide on a plane while his friends were fighting on the front lines. No, Ma-Ti you are not a hero. You are a Grade A bitch, with the bitchiest bitch power of them all and a fucking useless monkey. Captain Planet immediately goes straight to my shitlist for this completely delusional appraisal of the situation.

Apparently, this is what a hero looks like. Looks more like a whiny bitch to me.

Our episode finally ends, as we get another tasty eco tip about recycling or something. I don't know, I stopped paying attention after Skumm lost. Admittedly, this episode was MUCH better than episode one. Verminous Skumm is fantastic, and Jeff Goldblum does an amazing job with him. Plus, he's totally justified in polluting against those humans that treated him like shit. Make peace with rats goddammit. They're people too.

Episode Two Pollute-O-Meter: This episode is totally carbon neutral. Because the noise pollution of Ma-Ti's bitching was cancelled out by Verminous Skumm's beautiful voice acting.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Oh yes. The power is mine alright. The power to RANT about this goddamn show!! Yes ladies and gentlemen, welcome to an event so gigantic that it dwarfs the solar system itself. Welcome to me recapping the entire first season of CAPTAIN PLANET AND THE PLANETEERS. The year is 1990. I am four years old, and apparently the world needs to be taught a valuable lesson about environmentalism. And they need to be taught it IN CARTOON FORM. By this blue fuckwit with green hair. Yes, this is the show that taught us all such valuable lessons as PIGS ARE EVIL. SO ARE RATS. Oh, and the power of heart is truly the most useless fucking power in the world.

Episode One: A Hero For Earth (aka 'Gaia, the lazy bitch goddess').

We begin in a tranquil woodland environment. Rabbits are frolicking oh so happily with all the woodland creatures. AND THEN FUCKING WHAM! GIANT MECHANICAL ROBOT WALKER BITCHES. To my chagrin, the bunny narrowly avoids getting crushed. A bunch of trees however, do not. In the cockpit of said Star Wars-esque AT-AT is a bizarre pigman hybrid in a brown jacket. He is very amused with his crushing and snorts to himself, "With this giant landblaster, I'll be able to drill for oil anywhere!"

I immediately see that subtlety is not going to be this show's strong point.

The subtlety gets nuked even further as his chuckling skinny sidekick remarks, "Yeah boss, yeah! Even in this wildlife sanctuary!" Oh shit. Well, I think it may be safe to assume Mr Hogman is not one of the Planeteers referenced in the title. If he is though, I will immediately retract any forthcoming criticisms about this show. But nope, Mr. Hogman is in fact our very first...

ECO SUPER VILLAIN OF THE WEEEEEEEEK.

His name is Hoggish Greedly. His name alone has Captain Obvious, sitting in his ivory tower of obvious, going "That's a little bit on the nose don't you think?" He is some pig/man hybrid for reasons that are not addressed nor explained. He enjoys drilling for oil, making a shit ton of money and the worst puns and one-liners on the face of the Earth. "I'll be in hog heaven!" he says as he drills the fuck out of the wildlife sanctuary. As a connoissuer of villainy, I will be paying close attention each week in this feature to see if there are any evil-doers on this show that I can actually get behind. Yes, you heard me correctly, I'm trying to see if I can cheer for villains in a show about saving the planet. We are not off to a good start though as Captain Caricature in his Caricature Hide-out takes one look at Hoggish Greedly and says "I think he's too much of a caricature for me."

Back to the episode!

So, apparently, the drilling into the Earth causes a single droplet of water to fall onto the head of this sleeping ninny.

Yup, Gaia, the spirit and mother of the DAMN PLANET has seen fit to take a hundred year kip. PERFECT time to do it too, in the very century with the invention of modern warfare, nuclear testing, huge scale mining, rainforest deforestation and PRETTY MUCH EVERY FORM OF POLLUTION EVER. Great choice, fucknuts. My sympathy for you is already ruined and its the third minute of episode one. She turns on her screen, sees the planet getting ruined and asks,

"What's a mother to do?"

Well, my first answer would probably be to get off your ass, use your powers and fix the problem but NO. ALAS. I have underestimated the sheer laziness of Gaia. She instead decides FUCK THIS SHIT, LET'S GET SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT. And who are the most reliable, trustworthy and emotionally stable individuals I can get for this crucial task?

TEENAGERS!!!

Yup. Gaia decides to save the planet by giving some magic weapons to her own child soldier army, which I'm sure violates at least seven different Geneva conventions. But hey, at least she is racially diverse in her selections! In fact, each chosen child soldier is from a different corner of the world entirely! We have Wheeler, the ginger sex maniac from America (where else?). Gi, the trout lover from Asia. Kwame, the honest soilworker from Africa. Linka, the feisty kickass chick from the Soviet Union. Oh, and Ma-Ti the poor South American boy who has been chosen as the target of the biggest practical joke in history by being given the HEART RING OF UTTER USELESSNESS. And watch as he gets endlessly trolled throughout the entire series by people telling him its the greatest power of all when really all he can do is talk to a monkey.

Now, it's so obvious who is given which elemental power that I'm not even going to bother explaining it. If you can't figure it out, then I'm sorry, but you have a poorer intellectual ability than a discomobulated amoeba.

That's it Ma-Ti! Use your heart power! Maybe this time it'll do all those things we promised it would! *snicker*

So yeah, Gaia is a horrendous incompetent bitch who gets children to put themselves in mortal peril to do the work she should be doing herself. Oh, and she's terrible at selecting people for the task too as Wheeler immediately shows himself to be more interested in getting in Linka's pants than saving the Earth. Oh this is going to go well. And yup just as I mentioned before, Gaia immediately tells Ma-Ti how great the power of heart is, and that without him all the other powers are useless. Apart from the fact that everyone else just did a bunch of cool shit with their power rings that Ma-Ti had fucking nothing to do with.

Trolling Ma-Ti Count: One.

Kwame, the sensible one, says "I think it's a good idea if we practise with our new powers!" Well, I can't really argue with that one Kwame. But apparently Gaia can as she SHUTS THAT SHIT DOWN and says there's no time for that! They need to get out there and fight now, with no idea what they're doing! Because, child endangerment! WHAT THE HELL?! Oh dear lord Gaia, Hoggish Greedly is looking more appealing by the second. Oh, and then Gaia gives these untrained teenagers with no control over their powers A PLANE TO FLY. Fucking wench from hell. Of course, their powers then almost destroy the plane and get them all killed. Apparently its okay though, because Gi explains that she's got her driver's license, so flying a fucking plane should be no problem. I'm glad we cleared that one up.

The untrained teenagers decide a full frontal assault on Hoggish Greedly's AT-AT is a solid move, and he sprays them with oil from a big hose. To be honest, compared to Gaia's bullshit, that may be one of the least dastardly things we see in this episode. So the plane is about to crash, Gaia is nowhere to be found and some kids are about to die. But of course they don't, because they work out how to use their powers in the nick of time! No thanks to bitchface Gaia back in her sleepytime village. Hoggish Greedly just wants to be left alone to his polluting (and who can blame the guy?) and so he threatens to blast some animals with oil if the Planeteers don't fuck off. Yup, still not as evil as Gaia.

Instead of leaving, the Planeteers decide to combine their powers and OH SHIT. ITS BLUE FACE WITH HIS TIGHT RED UNDIES. Captain Planet for short. Hoggish takes one look at this guy and for some reason decides to flee. I guess the tightness of Captain Planet's underwear was too much for him. In what I'm guessing is going to become an unfortunate recurring structural protocol, Captain Planet miraculously sucks all the pollution away and kicks the bad guy's ass. Really, all Greedly even did was spill some oil and try to make a buck. Poor hog man. BP has done a ton worse and I don't see anyone destroying their machinery and beating the top brass up.

BUT OH WAIT! Greedly has a secret plan. He proclaims to Captain Tightpants "If I can't drill ya, I'll WASTE ya!" And for a moment I don't even want to think about what he means by that. But then he pulls out his hose and sprays goop all over Captain Planet. Yeah, this is suitable for children. Apparently, the super hero whose sole purpose is to clean up pollution is vulnerable when he comes into contact with pollution. That seems like a large design flaw that someone shouldn't have overlooked. So long story short, Captain Planet is saved at the last minute by the Planeteers and cleaned off with water which restores his powers, and I want to spray toxic waste of my own at every single writer who was involved in this turd.

Captain Planet busts up Greedly's AT-AT, causes millions of dollars of property damage and wins the day, sending us the important message that if someone is doing something you don't like, just blow up their stuff and beat them up! Episode One mercifully comes to an end as the Planeteers clean up the wildlife sanctuary, safe in the knowledge that while they're putting their ass on the line, Gaia is having a nap and neglecting her duty.

GOOOOOO PLANET!

Episode One 'Pollute-O-Meter': This episode was like a turd floating in the bath-tub. It didn't really do any lasting damage, but I'll be damned if I wanna get near it or have to fish it out ever again.